“Far from making domain names redundant, AI makes them more important”

According to Lars, a striking pattern runs through the history of the internet. As founder and CEO of ShortDot, the registry behind .icu, .bond, .buzz, .cyou and other extensions, he’s been in the business for 30 years. In that time, he’s witnessed a recurring pattern: a major technological change comes along, prompting people to predict that domain names will go into decline.

That was the fear when search engines rose to prominence, for example. And then when social media and smartphone apps arrived.

Demise of the domain name predicted before

“Time and again, we’ve been told that people won’t need domain names any more,” says Lars. “But what we’ve actually seen each time is growth in the number of internet users, websites and domain names.” And Lars expects the AI boom to have a similar effect.

Recent domain name market data backs up that view, argues Lars. Globally, the number of registered domain names went from 364.3 million at the end of 2024 to 386.9 million by the close of 2025. The fourth quarter of last year saw a net increase of 8.4 million domain names, more than 4 times the figure for the corresponding period of 2024. And Lars sees AI as the most plausible explanation for the upturn.

From idea to website in minutes

At first sight, AI appears to be a bigger challenge to domain names than previous technological developments. Increasingly, internet users are going straight to AI with their questions, rather than visiting websites. Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot can often give users all the information they’re after, removing the need to navigate to the primary sources.

So, will that depress demand for domain names? Lars reckons not. In fact, he believes AI will have the opposite effect. First, because he sees AI lowering the threshold to setting up new websites, webshops and online services. Instead of being reliant on designers, programmers and copywriters, entrepreneurs can now realise their ideas themselves by using AI.

“A year ago, I couldn’t have built a webshop myself,” says Lars. “But now I can ask AI to create one for me, and get it online in no time.” In other words, AI has opened the way for trying out things that people might previously have considered too expensive or difficult.

More small businesses

As a result, Lars expects AI to reshape the way people work. He envisages a future where, instead of having a single employer or profession, it’s normal to earn a living from a combination of activities. AI will facilitate that change by partially automating research, customer support, marketing and other tasks.

Lars gives the example of his own 12-year-old son, Davi. By the time Davi enters the world of work, Lars thinks it’ll be commonplace to run several businesses or projects at once, with AI handling some of the research, marketing and other activities. “If someone’s got 5 businesses, they’ll probably want 5 domain names.”

Need for infrastructure

That’s not to say that people will go on using domain names just the way they do today. Lars is quick to acknowledge that he hardly ever manually types a domain name nowadays. Like so many other internet users, he uses favourites, apps and saved links. However, he doesn’t see those habits undermining the importance of domain names. Instead he expects something like what happened with phone numbers. Today, very few people know more than a handful of phone numbers by heart, but numbers remain vital within the telecoms infrastructure. “The arrival of first Skype and then WhatsApp didn’t make phone numbers redundant.”

And Lars doesn’t see domain names becoming redundant either. While their visibility may decline, their importance within the internet’s connective substrate is only likely to grow, he believes.

According to Lars, AI agents are reinforcing that trend. By visiting websites, exchanging data and performing tasks independently, the agents are generating internet traffic and increasing reliance on the DNS and domain names.

Identity remains important

Lars expects recognisable domain names to remain valuable for individuals, enterprises and brands, even as people type fewer and fewer complete URLs.

For example, Lars’ son wants to have his own domain name some day, with the extension .ninja. “A name is an important component of identity, both offline and online.”

Lars therefore expects AI to change the role of domain names, not bring about their demise. “I see AI mainly as an opportunity, as an enabling technology. And the activities it enables will all need their own places on the internet.”